Teenage dreams, So hard to beat. November 1, 2004
Posted by Andy Roberts in : Music , trackbackI arrive back from a week abroad to read all the tributes to the late John Peel, and it seems to be impossible for any one writer to capture the entirety of his lifetime contribution to music.
A large part of my record collection is made up of artists I only got to know about through John Peel’s radio shows, particularly Top Gear, In Concert, and Sounds of the Seventies.
He had the remarkable ability in his music appreciation and promotion to keep on jumping down a generation in order to stay at the cutting edge of each wave of new music.
Simply irreplaceable.
Thanks for
Jimi Hendrix
English folk music
Loudon Wainwright III
American blues
Vivian Stanshall
Roy Harper
Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band
Michael Chapman
Tyrannosaurus Rex
the Soft Machine
David Bedford
Zimbabwian dance music
Kevin Ayres
The Undertones
Robert Wyatt
Morrisey
Bow wow wow
Siouxie
The Jam
Kevin Koyne
Lol Coxhill
Hungarian Polka
Stella Chiwese
Martha Wainwright
Bridget St John
the Beat
Ali Farke Toure
is an online professional who initiated DARnet 
…and Home Truths, which I always enjoyed listening to….
Roxy Music (I liked the first album), The Jam, well really all the punk stuff,Dory Previn, Faust, strange and interesting music from all over the world on his World Service programme (spot the insomniac!),oh and now we’ll never get to read that long promised autobiogaphy :-(.
Mostly I’ll miss his limitless enthusiasm for music and that reassuringly familiar voice telling me that I may find something a bit strange at first but it is worth persevering with.I feel sad for his kids and Sheila(she will always be ‘the pig’ to me) too.
Why is she the pig Linda?
It was John Peel’s pet name for his wife Shelia way back in the “Sounds of the Seventies” days.It was because she laughed like a squealing pig I seem to recall. Answering this and realising you weren’t even born then has made me feel suddenly ancient!